being raised when i am in the big nlind

[trippin bily]

I am fairly new to omaha8.I find that I am frequently raised when I am in blind.What is the proper play there when you dont have a decent or even playable hand? The answer seems like I should fold but by folding my weaker hands ( which is more often than not ) do i make myself to easy to maneuver.
Help
I don't want to be pushed over but I also don't want to put good money in after bad.I feel like I am doing both.
TY

[Yads]

Well if you're the only one left against the raiser, then it's generally correct to call with almost any hand since heads up no hand is more than a 2:1 favorite over any other hand. If there's a lot of people in then I wouldn't play any hand you wouldn't normally play for one bet.

[gergery]

[ QUOTE ]
Well if you're the only one left against the raiser, then it's generally correct to call with almost any hand since heads up no hand is more than a 2:1 favorite over any other hand. If there's a lot of people in then I wouldn't play any hand you wouldn't normally play for one bet.

[/ QUOTE ]


This raises a point I’ve been thinking about for awhile.

On the one hand, its correct that no hand is a really more than a 2:1 favorite.

On the other hand, if you’re facing an aggressive opponent who will likely bet on each street, then you call preflop, he bets you call on flop, same on turn and river. So the result is that you put in an extra 3 big bets by the river, whereas he put in 3 big bets and there were 1.5 big bets in before you called. So your odds are actually 4.5 to 3 and thus you need a 40% chance to win to justify calling down to river.

Of course, if you miss you fold and if you hit you raise so its not a clean analysis. But then you’d need to include times you hit a playable flop, etc.

So I’m not sure how to think about this, other than to say that using twodimes to determine what your win rate would be _at the river_ and then figuring that you should call getting those odds _preflop_ seems wrong. Maybe correct would be to say “do you have 2:1 odds to get a flop you like enough to continue”

Thoughts?

--Greg

[Yads]

I would just call and see if it was a flop I liked, if not I would most likely fold.

[Jim Morgan]

I am not a fan of defending the BB with trash. A previous poster said.... I call and see if I like the flop. That sounds like good advice to me, but let's examine the phrase "I like the flop". Suppose I have a pure trash hand like Q974 or QTT5. How often will I "like the flop". Not very damn often!. Sure, I might be way ahead when the flop comes K95, but do I really "like" this flop? Flopping Q73 for my Q974 is not exactly a party either. Yeah, I probably have the best high now, but the turn and river are almost certainly going to be uncomfortable one way or another.

This seems to me to be a situation where my implied odds REALLY suck. If my stack was very short and I only had enough chips to call the raise and perhaps a flop bet, then I think calling that raise with trash might be OK, but otherwise I think that bad cards and bad position will take a big bite out of any realizable wins. You are going to guess wrong far more often than your opponent, especially if his hand selection for raising includes some hands with primarily high card strength. Of course, if this situation comes up more than once a night, the game may not be worth the bother. And yes, I think this is even true in shorthanded games, provided the raiser is not a maniac, though clearly a lot more hands become playable in that situation. This philosopby may not be right.... I know that it makes me fold a lot of blinds and kill blinds, which is very annoying.

In shorthanded pots I don't like pocker pairs, especially those below KK. It's not easy to flop a set and if I don't my hand is crippled. AA is another story, but one can easily get hooked in with it. If there are lots of pre-flop callers, I will defend my BB with KK-JJ and hope to show a profit from the sets I flop, but only if I rate to get in for just one more bet. Same goes for more or less any nut flush draw. I still don't know when (or if) to defend the BB with something like KhJdTc4d or AsJd9c8h.

Jim Morgan

[Buzz]

[ QUOTE ]
I am not a fan of defending the BB with trash.

[/ QUOTE ]

Jim - Nor, I think, is anyone.

The reason you defend your blind is to deter attacks on your blinds in the future.

If you only consider your chances of success on the one current hand you've been dealt, in general, the superior play is to fold, rather than to defend with an inferior hand. (Duh).

But defending may not be the purely losing proposition it seems at first, because no hand is an island.

When you're in a game where your future blinds will be less likely to be attacked if you bite the bullet and defend the current blind, then your best move may be to defend.

When you're in a game where your future blinds will get raised (or not) every time you post, regardless of what you do, then, in general, you should not defend.

To defend or not to defend?

I think it depends on your opponents.

But since you seem to not see the case for defending, let me try to construct it for you.

If you make it clear you're no push-over, then maybe your blind won't get raised as often as it would if you seem an easy mark.

If you defend this time, maybe you won't get raised the next time because you defended this time.

I've been in games where non-defenders never get to see the flop cheaply when they post the blind, while other blind posters at the same table almost always get to see the flop for no additional expense.

I've been in other games where limps are rare, where anyone entering the action almost always does so with a raise. But even in these games, non-defenders probably get pushed around more than defenders. Hard to tell.

That's the end of the case for defending.

The case for folding is simple. When the odds on a particular deal would be against you, you figure to do better for that particular deal by folding.

[ QUOTE ]
Suppose I have a pure trash hand like Q974 or QTT5. How often will I "like the flop". Not very damn often!

[/ QUOTE ]

Yikes. Did you have to make them that bad? Those are simply awful.

However, that doesn't necessarily mean I wouldn't defend my big blind with them. But if I did defend, I'd think of the expected loss as the price of insurance for the future.

Buzz

[chaos]

If you are in a low limit game where it regularly gets folded around to late position, you should be looking for another looser game.

In low limit games you make your money from people playing too loose preflop and on the flop. If your opponents are playing this tight there will be little money to be made without expert play typical of the higher level games (30/60 and higher).